Henry III Fine Rolls: Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Chawton’

From Guildford, where he was on Sunday 29 May, Henry moved to Chawton, later of course of Jane Austen fame. He left there on Tuesday 31 May and the same day reached Winchester. He now had plenty of time to prepare for the proclamation of the papal letters quashing the Provisions of Oxford. The lives of medieval rulers revolved around the ecclesiastical calendar. They were deeply aware of how celebration of the great religious festivals could give a sacral gloss to their rule before large gatherings of people. Thus coronations and crown wearings, parliaments and proclamations were frequently time to coincide with the great feasts. [See the blog on the ‘Revealing Records’ symposium below.] So it was in 1261 for Henry III intended to pronounce the papal letters on the feast on Pentecost. In 1261 as in 2011, this fell on Sunday 12 June. Arriving at Winchester on 31 May, Henry thus had eleven days before the papal balloon went up.

The journey to Winchester, not surprisingly, saw a sharp decline in the numbers of writs purchased in connection with the common law legal procedures; only nineteen as opposed to sixty the week before when the king had been largely in London. The fine rolls for this week also have a fascinating order highlighting various aspects of the king’s relations with the Jews. It was issued at the instance of Henry’s son, the Lord Edward, which reflected the fact that the Jews had been placed in some respects under his control. The Jews owed the king 1000 marks (£666) as a penalty for an unspecified ‘trespass’. This they had been due to pay before Pentecost. Now, at Edward’s request, the payment was postponed till three weeks after the feast of John the Baptist, so to 15 July (another example of how the calendar was conceived in terms of the great ecclesiastical festivals). Meanwhile the Jews were to recover their chattels seized for the non payment of the debt. Henry then added a proviso. In the assessment of the money to pay the debt, poor Jews were not to be ‘grieved’. In intervening for the Jews, Edward was probably serving his own interests. There would be all the more of Jewish money for himself. Quite probably, he was also paid for his intervention. But in Henry’s proviso one wonders if one sees his well known concern for the poor embracing even the poor of the Jewish community. The importance attached to the proviso is shown in the way it was added to the initial record of the order on the fine rolls. Henry, however, was also casting an avaricious eye over Jewish wealth. Before the chattels were returned, there was to be an inquiry into what exactly was in the ‘coffers’ or ‘chests’ of the Jews in London and elsewhere. This was to be carried out secretly so the Jews were unaware of it, and the king was to be informed of the results.